


Whisper my Name in Another Voice

by standbygo



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dark John, Explicit Language, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Reunions, Suicidal Thoughts, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-09
Updated: 2013-10-09
Packaged: 2017-12-28 23:17:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/998089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standbygo/pseuds/standbygo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You live near here?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whisper my Name in Another Voice

I’m sorry.

You’re very nice

And I’m honoured.

Really.

But I am

not

really

particularly

interested in you.

 

Nothing personal.

It’s not that you’re not good looking

And it was nice to kiss you

and let you bite my neck

and come all over me.

That was good. I liked that.

It made the ringing in my ears stop for a while.

 

It’s just that 

I have something to do.

A quest,

if you will.

You see,

I’m trying to fuck as many cocks as possible

in memory of the one I couldn’t.

 

So. 

I’m sorry.

You understand

I hope.

But I need to carry on

with that.

 

And

on the whole,

I am really

really

really 

not interested 

in living.

 ~~~

John lets the bass line of the music vibrate and fall across his shoulders. It helps him to stop thinking for a bit, to live in the very centre of his brain, even for a few minutes. He wonders vaguely if that is what a cocaine high feels like, then forces this thought away by draining his beer in three long swallows.

The man sitting next to him looks over and smiles. John sees that he has laugh wrinkles around his eyes.

“Buy you another?”

John considers quickly – that was his second, and more might work against his purposes this evening.

“No, I’m good. You live near here?" 

The man’s smile hitches up another degree. “Yes.”

“I’m J – James.”

“Mark.”

 ~~~

“You’ve really not done this before?”

“No. I just... No. Just. Show me what to do. Please.”

Mark rubs his face, a frown puckering his forehead. “I don’t know, James, I feel a bit-”

“Oh for God’s sake.” John folds himself over and puts Mark’s cock in his mouth, gagging immediately.

"Jesus, wait, let me just… Oh God…”

 ~~~

Mark’s breathing evens out as he nuzzles into the pillow. “You okay?” he murmurs.

“Yeah, good. I… I need the bathroom.”

“Second door on the left.”

John pads down the hall, finds the door, and pisses. He washes his face. He dries his hands and face on a towel and finds himself transfixed by a painting on the wall.

It shows a white horse, and a black Pegasus. The two animals are side by side, as if running together, or dancing. It’s a poster, not an original painting, but John can see the brushstrokes, where the brush filled out the shapes with colour. The feathers of the Pegasus are pink and maroon and blue, and its tail is plaited with a red ribbon.

“No,” he whispers to himself. “Not here. Don’t.”

He washes his face again.

He hesitates outside the bedroom door, and hears only evenly spaced breaths. He goes back to the living room and picks up his jeans and shirt from the rumpled pile on the floor. He left his pants in the bedroom, no matter.

Dressed, he moves silently to the door. Mark’s large yellow dog stands and stares at him, tail wagging slowly. John puts his finger to his lips. 

“Shhhh.”

The dog lies back down, and John slips out.

~~~

“James, come on, I really want to-”

“Yeah, me too. You live near here?”

“No, we can’t, not my place, my… my flatmate is home.”

John knows he meant to say _wife_ , but allows the lie.

“Can we go to your place?”

John knows he couldn’t bear having someone else in Baker Street, having someone else see the flat. He could simply use the same excuse, but he also knows he couldn’t say that word _flatmate_ , can’t share his breath forming that word.

“Here, come here…”

He pulls them into an alley, pushes the man against the wall, and reaches his hand down, and down, and down.

It’s over quickly, and John wipes his hand on his jeans, zips his flies and walks quickly out of the alley. He doesn’t care if anyone sees the whitish smear on his thigh.

~~~

John’s sitting at the pub watching the match when he hears a soprano voice at his side.

“You’re a real cutie. What’s your name? I’m May.”

“Fuck off,” he snarls.

She jerks back, and he revels in the hurt look on her face. 

“Fucking faggot,” she says, and walks away.

He laughs without mirth and orders a double scotch.

~~~ 

A quavering tenor, half groan, half whine. A tenor. “Oh God, James, you’re so fucking hot, you’re so amazing, that feels…”

“Don’t talk now,” John says.  “Don’t speak.” 

~~~

“You’ll like this, James, it feels so good.”

John’s body feels like an elastic, like a bowstring, vibrating nicely. He’s stopped noticing the dirty coverlet on the bed, the dingy walls, the anonymous art found in every hotel room in the world. 

“What?” he says. He can’t remember this one’s name, but it doesn’t matter. 

The man leans forward, pushing John’s shoulders down into the bed a little harder.  His weight moves onto John’s belly and John gasps a little, the breath pushed out of him.

“You’ll love this,” the man says, and presses his palm against John’s throat. 

John’s first instinct is to grasp at the man’s arm, to scratch at it, to pull it away. He does, briefly, then forces his hands down to his sides again. Stars begin to gather around the edges of his vision, and swarm inward.

_Oh_ , he thinks. _Oh_.

In the few seconds before the stars completely overtake his vision, he looks up at the man’s face. He is smiling in a thin way, showing his incisors. Then he takes his other hand and it joins the first.

John realizes that the man is not going to let go. He feels his eyes swell, his tongue grow thick.

_Thank you_ , he thinks. _Thank you. At last._

After a time, the weight is plucked from him, suddenly. He smiles, thinking how light he feels now. He hears a strange cracking thump and a sliding sound.

“John.”

Oh. How wonderful. More than he had dreamed.

“John.”

_Aunt June was right_ , he thinks. _You are greeted by your loved ones_.

“John! You idiot.”

John blinks with surprise, then is surprised that he is blinking. Not what he had expected at all.

“John! Look at me!”

John blinks and blinks and looks. Jean jacket, turtleneck. Black curls like tendrils under a cloth cap. Eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes. John feels a hand on his face, the hand covering the whole side of his face. Smells cigarettes and, incongruously, mint. The sharp smell of the mint helps him focus.

“What were you thinking? I’ve been following you for ages, what were you doing, that man could have…” The voice halts, the mouth hanging open. John stares at the shape of the mouth.

“Oh. Oh John. Oh no no no.” John is pulled upright, finds arms wrapped around him. His mouth and nose lands in the crease of a neck, the smell of mint stronger now. “How did I not see it? Stupid, stupid-”

John laughs, bursting with joy, so happy, so happy to be dead at last, and Sherlock is here. Tears fall into his laughing mouth. “I’m so sorry, Sherlock, please forgive me, please-”

“What for, John? What are you sorry for?”

“I called you a machine, and you jumped. I didn’t mean it, you know I didn’t, and I never told you. Never said I loved you. I wanted to tell you and I got afraid and called you a dick instead, and I never got to say…”

“What are you saying? Quiet now, shush, you’re going into shock…”

John’s eyes are focusing and he looks past the curls framing his vision.  Dingy walls, dirty mirror. A limp pale arm, dangling against the wall near the floor, strange angle. 

Wait. Wait.  

“Aren’t I dead?” he croaks.

He feels a sharp cheekbone against his, the muscles pulling up, the smile pushing against the side of his face.

“No, you’re not, you idiot. And neither am I.”

John pulls back and looks. Feels the rough material of the jacket under his hands and against his bare legs. Feels the bruise forming on his carotid artery. Feels fluid rush into his mouth.

He tries to pull away; Sherlock holds on to him until he realizes John’s need and releases him with a look of alarm. John turns and vomits over the side of the bed: beer and then bile, because John hasn’t bothered to eat today. He wipes his mouth on the coverlet and collapses back on the bed.

“Jesus,” he says. “Jesus.”

Sherlock smiles small. “No,” he says. “Just me.”

~~~

They return to Baker Street and talk themselves speechless. They have naturally gravitated to their accustomed chairs, sitting opposite but not opposed.

They reach the end of what words can give. Sherlock slides forward out of his chair, kneels and curves his arms around John’s back. He lays his head into John’s side. John cannot bear this and folds forward over Sherlock.

They stay together in the knot they have created, and begin to whisper their apologies into each other’s skin.

 

 

_End_

**Author's Note:**

> The painting that John looks at is "Guelph" by Heather Cooper.


End file.
